


we'll go from there

by drunknpylades



Series: edge of memory [8]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Avoidance, Edge is not good with feelings, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Lack of Communication, M/M, Shay has had enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 16:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13838958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunknpylades/pseuds/drunknpylades
Summary: Edge is back on the Tower and doing a fantastic job of avoiding a certain member of the Vanguard. Hopefully his Fireteam can knock some sense into him. It remains to be seen if violence will be used or not.





	we'll go from there

It’s been three days since Edge has set foot on the Tower. Three days of the sweltering heat of Venus and Vex around every corner and column. Three days of Banjo-13’s awkward brand of chatter. And three days of his thoughts never once straying to Cayde and the family he’s probably still done nothing about. If he’s being honest with himself, which he’s had a habit of not doing lately, his thoughts had strayed once. That first night on Venus had been particularly rough.

He and Cayde may not spend every night together, consecutive days are almost impossible in their line of work, but more often than not they had tried to at least comm one another if they were apart. And yet they’d still been under the illusion that the thing growing between them had still been simply a convenient distraction.

Turning in that first night away from Earth without his comm going off had been- hard. Of course, Edge could have commed Cayde himself but that shame had still been roiling around inside him, making him nauseous at the thought of reaching out to the Exo without being given permission. In his head it wasn’t his place to make contact when he was the one that left the last time they’d been together.

Now here he is, transmatting into the Tower with the Traveler and the sun high in the sky and everything comes rushing back. The little bit of peace he’d had while on Venus is shattered when his boots hit the concrete and he looks up into Ace’s startled eyes.

“Ace,” there’s no tremble in his voice and Edge is inordinately pleased by that fact. “Coming or going?”

“Little bit of both,” she replies. She looks both better and worse than when Edge had last seen her. The stance of her body is looser but her hair is cut short on one side, an ugly red line running across her temple that has the tell tale burn marks of a hobgoblin line rifle. “Coming to get a few things, but also going to stop by to see Hawthorne. Lis apparently left a message for me with her.”

Edge nods and feels his fingers twitch with something like adrenaline. Coming off the previous outing on Venus he’s still feeling a little keyed up and this had not been the kind of welcome he’d been anticipating.

“Any missions coming up?” His eyes don’t move to the wound on her head, but he’s hoping she says no.

Ace shrugs. “Not really. Couple Crucible matches later, but nothing official. Maybe a quick turn on Nessus if this message from Lis isn’t anything pressing.”

The Tower has the best medical facilities he’s ever seen, and yet there’s always that chance that even with their Light and Ghosts that things can go wrong. There’s a scar on his arm that’s testament to that fact. Ace seems fine and he knows she can handle herself but it’s more than that now. Things have changed even if he’s not actually involved.

She’s Cayde’s daughter.

“If you need an extra pair of eyes I’m available for missions. My fireteam is a bit scattered at the moment and I’m looking to get away from the Tower for a bit.” It’s the truth, but the moment he says it out loud Edge realizes it wasn’t the best choice of words.

Ace doesn’t narrow her eyes or do anything really to show that his words mean anything to her but Edge knows he’s just given her a piece to something.

“Didn’t you just get back from something off planet?” She asks.

Sometimes he forgets just how well snipers can see when they’re at a distance. And Ace has been kept at quite the distance recently.

“Just looking to stay busy.” Edge replied. It’s a weak excuse and he knows it.

Ace nods and it seems like she’s not going to push the matter this time. They don’t know each other overly well and Edge is glad of that fact in the moment since it keeps her from asking too many questions. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It’s not until later, after he’s climbed to his favorite hiding spot in the hangar, and that had taken some skill to get to without crossing Cayde’s path, that he realizes it’s the first time he’s actually spoken to her since they both figured out the truth of her parentage.

He’s still at a loss for what to think of her. They’re both tied to Cayde at this point in some way but Edge gets the distinct feeling that that’s the one person neither one of them want to talk about. And yet he feels like they need to talk. At least Cayde and Ace do. Edge will wait his turn and talk to the Vanguard eventually but he knows Cayde has his own set of problems to deal with at the moment and he doesn’t need Edge stirring it up. They’ll figure their relationship out eventually. It’s just not a priority.

Everything is so much easier up here. Where there’s nothing between him and the city but open air. He can see for miles from his perch. Looking down at the city in one direction and able to see most of the Tower in the other. Sniping was never his forte but Edge can see the appeal of being able to see everything a target does and take them out before they know you’re there. His old job had been a lot like that, if maybe on ground level.

The start of a headache throbs at the base of his skull and Edge pulls his thoughts away from the past. It hadn’t gone well for him the last time he’d gone digging.

“Edge, you got your ears on?”

His comm chirps with perfect timing and Edge has never been more relieved to hear Shay’s voice even as his gut fills with dread. There’s no way she’s going to let him get away with being out of communication for so long. He hadn’t told her or Hope where he’d been going before leaving for Venus and he knows how much she likes knowing where the fireteam is. Especially after the Red Legions first attack on the old Tower.

“You’ve always got your ears on, idiot. Now answer me.”

He’d taken too long with his reply and now he can hear the exasperation in her voice. “I’m here, Shay.” He replies. “At the Apex.” It’s the nickname Hope had come up with for his favorite hiding spot. One of the highest places he could get to on the Tower and still have room to lie down and sleep comfortably if he felt like it. Shay hates it. She was never the best with heights.

It takes the Titan less than five minutes to get to the base of Edge’s little hideaway and she’d been grumbling about it the whole way. “I swear to the Traveler if you make me climb up there in full armor I’m going to kick you over the side when I get up there. And you’ll be able to hear me laugh the whole way down.”

Edge feels one side of his mouth twitch up without his permission and he leans over the side to look down at her. The whiteness of her armor is a beacon against the drab greys of the Tower. Even from his perch he can see the scowl on her face.

The thought of free falling hundreds of feet is appealing. The freeness of the wind in his face and the weightlessness of the fall itself is something he’s done before, just to see how close to the ground he can get before activating his jump. That swoop in his guts just as his momentum changes is a heady feeling. Unfortunately he knows he’s not in the best headspace for that kind of activity and he’s pretty sure that Shay’s aware of it or she wouldn’t have made the threat. She knows of his love of heights so the fact that she threatened him with free fall means she knows that something is going on even if-

“Your Vanguard was called away from his post down here so you’re safe to come down and have a damn conversation face to face for five minutes.”

And there went any hope of her not knowing what was bothering him. He’d hoped to get away with vaguely hinting at having an issue but not wanting to talk about it. It seems that’s not to be the case.

Cetus nudges at the back of his head. “You should talk to her. She sounds mad.”

Edge nudges the Ghost away with the back of his hand. “She always sounds mad.” But he does roll off the ledge, carefully making his way down to ground level. He can’t help being a little showy and dropping the last fifty or so feet and timing his jump for the last moment so he doesn’t break his legs.

Shay tenses up and crosses her arms. “All you Hunters are so overdramatic.”

Edge wisely doesn’t say anything. Shay is in a mood and he knows that anything he says is just going to upset her more.

“I found that little slip of paper you’ve been looking for, by the way.” She says and Delta transmats the rolled paper into her waiting hand before returning to his place over her left shoulder. “I’m not sure I want to give it to you now, though. You’ve been avoiding us as well as your Vanguard and that’s not normal operating procedure for you Edge. What’s going on? And what does this journal entry have to do with it?”

“You read it?” Edge’s stomach drops somewhere into the vicinity of his boots. Shay may not be a “bigger picture” kind of person, but she can connect the dots as well as anyone else when handed enough information. And the amount Edge has given her is quite damning.

Shay lets the hand holding the journal entry fall to her side and she heaves a very long suffering sigh. “Of course I read it,” she snaps. “You’ve been gone for three days without any kind of contact with us. Hope was worried. And you’ve been distant for even longer than that.”

Guilt claws at his insides and Edge can’t make himself look her in the eye. “It’s complicated, Shay.” He says, voice low and eyes still focused on a piece of her shoulder armor. “There’s more going on that affects more than just me and I-”

“It’s not all that complicated, really.” She interrupts. “You’re spending too much time on your own and it’s gotten you stuck so far inside your own head that you can’t see the way out. There’s something going on with you and your Vanguard beyond the usual flirty give and take and it’s compromised you.”

That guilt grows hotter, turning into something mean and molten behind his ribs. _What does she know about his problems? She has no idea what’s going on._ “You don’t understand. Cayde and I aren’t-”

“Bullshit,” she interrupts. Her hand clenches in anger and Edge hears the crinkle of crushed paper. His eyes dart down and to the journal entry clutched tightly in her fist. Shay keeps talking and he doesn’t really hear her. “You both have been doing whatever it is you do for months now. You think you’re so sly about it and guess what? You’re not! Half the Tower knows and no one cares. So get over yourself and talk to me!”

Edge holds out his hand, eyes still on the paper. “Can I have that now, please?”

Shay blinks at him, a startled look in her dark eyes if he’d actually been paying attention. “Did you hear anything I just said? Edge, you can’t keep going like this. Something has to bend or you’re going to break yourself into more pieces than Hope and I can put back together.”

Break. Broken. He knows, alright? _He knows._

There’s pieces of him that are missing, just like everyone else, but sometimes those missing pieces just get so damned overwhelming. He tries so hard not to acknowledge them and maybe that’s the problem. They just sit there, untended and festering in the dark places he’s shoved them into and then at the most inopportune moment they just rise up and swallow him whole.

He needs to stop ignoring them. And he will. Just not right now. Right now he has more important things to worry about. Like making sure that if he can’t have a family at least he can make sure Cayde has his. He can tell himself he’s doing it for Candace too, but it all comes back to Cayde and Edge’s inability to leave the Exo alone.

“I heard you,” he replies quietly. “But I need that. Need to give it back to its owner.”

Shay shares a look with Cetus over Edge’s shoulder and the Ghost dips in the air like the smallest of nods. She straightens herself and clenches her jaw on all the things she wants to say. It’s usually her place to be the blunt one, but this time it looks like anything she says is going to go in one ear and out the other. Edge is the most stubborn of all them when he sets his mind on something.

“Alright,” she hands him the crinkled paper and Edge immediately begins to smooth it out. “But I expect you to comm Hope. She’s been practically beside herself with worry since you left last time. You know how she gets.”

Edge nods absently before finally looking up to meet her eyes. “I’ll talk to her. And I’m sorry I’ve been so distant lately. Everything should straighten itself out soon.” With a helping hand or two, of course. “Thank you for being such a good friend, Shay.” He briefly touches her shoulder on his way past and prays that Cayde hasn’t come back from wherever he’d gone. His head may be a little clearer but he’s not ready to talk to the Exo just yet. He’s got another target in mind.


End file.
